


night; then: the sound of her voice

by firstaudrina



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate take, Angst, Breakup Sex, F/M, Missing Scene, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 16:03:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18626569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Clary’s been at the door to the boathouse for the better part of an hour, her fists against the metal, words audible even under the whine of Simon’s guitar.I want to be with you, she says, barely muffled by his headphones.I love you, Simon, I made a mistake.So Simon lets her in. He never wanted to keep her out.set after 2x14, "the fair folk."





	night; then: the sound of her voice

**Author's Note:**

> It's a real sad one! Written for a prompt at this ficathon.

Simon lets her in. He was never going to not.

Clary’s been at the door to the boathouse for the better part of an hour, her fists against the metal, words audible even under the whine of Simon’s guitar. _I want to be with you_ , she says, barely muffled by his headphones. _I love you, Simon, I made a mistake_.

So Simon lets her in. He never wanted to keep her out. 

As soon as he slides the door back, Clary is against his chest, a sturdy little battering ram. The first time she ever crushed herself against him like this was in ninth grade when she was heartbroken over Mike Fielder, a junior who didn’t know she existed. And it wasn’t the first time Simon _knew_ but it was up there, right at the moment when puberty made innocent pre-teen devotion into something else. 

She holds him tightly and turns her wet cheek against his chest, her hair in his face, her smell in his nose. It’s corny, but Clary always smells like a sunny day. Warm and fresh, like trees and grass, like the feeling of getting soft serve at the park. Like Simon’s entire life up to this point.

He doesn’t put his arms around her.

“It was the Queen, it was all — it was a trick, she made me — I panicked.” Clary speaks soft and fast, presses closer. “I love you. You have to know that, right?” She looks up, eyes earnest, sharp chin digging into his collarbone. “What would I do without you, huh? What would I do?”

There’s an alternate universe where Clary went to the Brooklyn Academy of Art and Simon went to NYU. They FaceTimed from their dorm rooms even though they were just a borough away; they met in subway stations and studied together and ate fries at 2 a.m. Clary got a boyfriend and Simon hated him. Maybe Simon got a boyfriend and Clary hated him.

Clary’s been to another universe, so they’re out there. Every fork in the road has been followed somewhere. There’s an alternate universe where Simon never woke up again after Camille. Where Clary made a different call and left him in the dirt. 

But she wouldn’t have. What would she do without him?

Simon puts his hands lightly on Clary’s shoulders and edges her away, puts space between them. She’s bewildered and nervous, face all pink and smeared with tears. He says, “Please don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not!” Clary says immediately. “You could have died, Simon. I had to do something! I didn’t have a choice. But it didn’t mean anything, I _swear_ —"

She’s out to convince someone, maybe herself.

“It wasn’t a trick, you didn’t panic.” He says it calmly, but his voice still wavers. “Maybe you didn’t have a choice, but it meant something. You have feelings for —”

“I don’t!” Clary says sharply. “I have feelings for _you_.” She’s up close again, her hands on his cheeks, bloodshot eyes making her irises even greener. “ _That_ , whatever — whatever it is, it’s nothing like you and me. _Nothing_. I want you.” She wets her lips. “I want _you_ , Simon.” 

Just not as much as she wants Jace.

“Not like I want you,” he says, tight with this kind of wild misery he hasn’t felt since the day he crawled out of the ground. 

“That’s not true, I swear that’s not true —” Clary kisses him and it tastes like salt. “You’re the one I want, Simon, you are —”

Her arms wind around his neck as she kisses him again, lips parted. He almost laughs. They used to sing that to each other in the halls of their middle school, _you’re the one that I want, you are the one I want, ooh ooh ooh, honey_. She was Danny; he was Sandy. It was a whole thing. 

She’s trying to prove something. Her hands are all over him, fluttering over his jaw and throat, stroking his shoulders. The kiss is desperate and messy and Simon would like to say he had it in him not to return it, but he kisses her back on instinct. No, that’s not it. He kisses her back because he wants to. He wants to take her at her word. So he does. 

Simon pushes her sweater off and she fumbles for his t-shirt, they hurry through laces and buckles to get to skin. Clary keeps ducking to catch his mouth in another kiss, her palms pressed to his cheeks like she’s underlining the point. He can practically hear her thinking _I want you I want you I want you_ , telling herself the story they both want to believe. 

He curls his hands under her thighs and lifts her up into his arms easily, her long legs locking around his waist. All he can see is her coppery hair at the edges of his vision as he stumbles back through the clutter of the boathouse, landing with a hard jolt in one of the chairs. Her nails bite into the back of his neck. She doesn’t stop kissing him. They’ve got jeans on, shirts off, her bra pale green against her pink skin. He drags the straps down while she reaches back for the clasp and he’s actually — there’s a little tremor in his hands. 

To compensate, he touches her too roughly. Her pulse rabbiting under his tongue feels honest in a way her sharp gasps do not; they sound different now, too loud, but maybe it’s just that there’s nothing to distract from them. Usually there’s music. He put on “In Your Eyes” the first time, never one to miss a reference. Maybe it’s that he’s stifling himself, because if lets himself make noise, who knows what he’ll say. 

He cups her tits and buries his face against her chest, her skin flushing everywhere his mouth lands. That’s something, right? It’s supposed to be something when she jerks the button of her jeans open and takes one of his hands to slide it into her panties. See? She can get it up for him after all.

Simon sinks his fingers into her, thinking, _I’ll regret this_. She rocks against him, rides his hand too showily, her fingers curled into fists against his chest. Her eyes are screwed tightly shut. He studies her face, the dent of effort between her eyebrows and the downturned, open mouth. Is she thinking of him?

“Clary,” he says, quiet, but she’s eager and frantic, she’s making her point. She’s going to come because she decided she was going to, because sex has always been surprisingly easy for them. He kept waiting for it to be weird, dreading it almost, but no, it was like everything else; they knew each other too well for it not to work. 

She comes on his fingers, contracting tight around him, hair spilling around her bowed head. Then in one quick little hiccup she starts sobbing, rough and roiling like being suddenly sick. The kind of crying that starts somewhere deep. She puts her hands over her face, hiding it from him. 

There isn’t a minute of Simon’s life or death that isn’t braided together with hers. Not a minute of it. And he knows that just a few months ago their lives were normal to the point of blandness, just a few weeks ago her mother died, they have both undergone such alchemical transformations that it’s a wonder they can look at each other and still recognize anything they see. 

But it all feels very pale compared to the rich technicolor of her kissing someone else. 

“I’m sorry, Simon, you have no idea how sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me —"

He thinks of her face the night he turned, tremulous and anxious but not remorseful.

She’s always sorry.


End file.
